


The single human weakness

by Baryshnikov



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Asphyxiation, Character Study, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, Eldritch, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Mild Sexual Content, Old Gods, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Power Play, Restraints, Sensual horror, Tentacles, Time Travel (kind of), mentions of cannibalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:49:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23698783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: There was something lurking inside the Forbidden Forest and Tom was really starting to wish he hadn't gone looking for it.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Comments: 16
Kudos: 171





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [In the Sepulchre by the Sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13934691) by [HalfpennyDreadfuls (orphan_account)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/HalfpennyDreadfuls). 



> I hope everyone is doing okay right now, and I apologise for not updating anything recently, to be honest, I haven't been able to concentrate on anything actually worth sharing, and, unfortunately, I still have coursework/exams to prepare for, so instead, here's a weird little thing that's been lurking in the back of my brain for ages.
> 
> I'll be perfectly honest, this fic is pretty (really) weird and I'm not a hundred per cent sure what I was aiming for, but I think it was somewhere along the lines of Eldritch Horror meets power play, which now that I think about it is not a particularly compelling beginning, but oh well.

People said that there was something in the Forbidden Forest.

And it wasn’t just the typical rumours that were always spread by adolescent boys with nothing better to do, designed to scare each other and nothing more. No. This was something—something… 

_More._

Something old, ancient even, and so powerful that Tom could feel it pulsating even from this great distance away. He’d glanced more times than he could count out the window on the third floor, just watching the black shapes of the trees and trying to see them move. Simply trying to see what it was that about them that caused that loud, heavy, pulsing in his organs, and made an uncomfortable warmth collect underneath his skin. 

Even when he wasn’t looking, or, for that matter _thinking_ about the depths of the forest, Tom was still aware of the humming inside himself; something deep in his bones aching and calling out as a magnet might to its counterpart.

And it was only getting louder. 

What had begun at the beginning of the year as a mere whisper every so often had become a constant, continual sound reverberating around the back of his head, rebounding off every wall and leaving behind dents and scratches that seemed—sometimes—to form words. 

As though something, or perhaps _someone_ , was murmuring something to him. Words that were spoken in this smooth tone that did not sound like English, rather whatever it was that spoke to him, did so in a language that was old, and worn and achingly intimate; a language that was theirs and _theirs_ alone. The one that began with a hiss on the air and ended in a soft, slippery slowness that was thick with something Tom couldn’t describe but that sounded so nice on his ear. 

That sticky caramel sound was the reason why he was out here in the forest. Surrounded by the tall, proud trunks of trees he couldn’t see the top of, and verdure that looked… odd. Tom swallowed as he pressed his toe against the thick stem of plant he couldn’t name, it swayed with the pressure just as a plant should, but at the same time, there was a stuttering to the movement; an unnatural stiffness. 

He shook his head. Stories could be powerful things, and that was all this was—a story. So Tom continued following the sickly-sweet susurrations that continued to call out to him, and that he was increasingly sure were actually the letters of his own name, now spoken with a lilt that made his palm prickle. 

The noise continued to slither between the tree trunks, loud and definite, calling out to him. 

Although he would deny it, a small part of Tom _knew_ he shouldn’t be out here. But it was an endeavour born out of equal parts boredom and curiosity—always two of his cruder weaknesses; not that he could help them. Of course, usually, the pursuits of academia smoothed them down to a flat curve that could be ignored, but just recently the curriculum felt flat.

And the type of magic available to learn was becoming increasingly _mundane_. 

Every action was about practicality and preparation, there was nothing… _stimulating_. Nothing about power. And Tom had found himself more often than not, staring out the window and watching the black stretches of forest that bordered the grass, and wondering whether there really was something that knew true power lurking out there. 

Even back when he’d just been looking, there had been something unnerving about the great expanses of unknown. Something that made the skin on the back of his neck itch with bramble pricks, and his fingers twitch quite involuntarily, and of course, there was still that murmuring; a sound set to a frequency that no one else seemed to be able to hear. So, it had only been a matter of time. 

A countdown to the inevitable. 

There was something lurking in the Forbidden Forest, and Tom was going to find out what it was.


	2. Chapter 2

Tom was reconsidering that now, though.

Not explicitly as such, but the slight twinges of regret were hanging heavy in his throat. It was only because it was cold, he told himself; it was only because it was colder and darker in here than he thought it would be, and he wasn’t adequately prepared.

It certainly wasn’t because he was scared. 

Though he was, he’d admit… unnerved. But that was a purely biological response to the fact that there was something profoundly _wrong_ about this place. To start, there were no animals to be seen. There was nothing _alive_ to be heard anywhere. No birds chirped or squawked or even rustled the branches of the uppermost trees, and the air was eerily silent, save for the long letters of his name that slid through the air; thick and heavy with a sentiment that Tom couldn’t decipher. 

But denial and ignorance did not stop the physical sensations of the forest getting to him. The viscous quality of the oxygen was undeniable—so too was the way that it pressed into his throat and stuck to his lungs like tar. A deep, physical pressure all around him, pulsing heat under his feet, and above his head, and touching every inch of his skin, as though he was standing inside someone’s heart. 

Tom swallowed.

He kept moving, though, through the undergrowth, feeling each of the ferns biting at his skin, and the moss and dirt and pieces of wood crunching under his feet as he crushed them. All the time he tried to shake the feeling that there were eyes on the leaves of every tree, and creatures hiding in the thick shadows. 

_Watching him_. 

Studying him. Perhaps even mimicking him. Seeing each of his movements and learning how to contort their own limbs into the shapes that he made. He tried to smile to himself, but his mind kept wandering back to the rumours of a real creature in the forest; they were nothing, really, just scraps of schoolboy stories stolen from lost glances and foggy memories. 

But even the scraps were enough when you were alone in the dark. 

Tom glanced behind him, not entirely sure what he expected to see, but knowing that he should have seen _something_ standing there and staring at him. A deer, or a bird, or whatever it was that was calling out his name should have been there. 

There was nothing. 

Nothing but more trees; their bark brown and smooth, unnaturally so, and their leaves hanging lifeless as though they were merely pieces of coloured paper glued onto the branches of dead trees. That, of course, made clear another thing that was somewhat unsettling about this forest. It was all the same. 

And not just in that there were trees of the same species growing side by side, but rather, _every_ tree was the same. An identical pattern of moss crawling up the side, and the same patch of ivy collecting at the top. Even the mushrooms and mildew that were coiled around the bases of each and every tree were so strikingly similar that Tom found himself swallowing harder and keeping his eyes on the ground. 

He should have gone back then. 

But somehow the sound of his name on a foreign tongue compelling him forward. As though there was an attraction in his very soul, and he was being dragged forward by an unknown, and frankly unknowable force that seemed to _want_ him to come that bit close; that bit _deeper_ into the winding bowels of the forest—the black stomach filled up with a luscious dampness that burrowed into his skin.

There was something lurking in the Forbidden Forest, and Tom was going to find out what it was.


	3. Chapter 3

Tom could feel it, or at least, feel _something_ out there. It was in the trees, literally _inside_ them, scratching at the bark from within and calling out his name. So too was it in the shadows that were cast by the smouldering shade of the sun; long and stretched and unnatural, that seemed to make patterns on the exposed earth, though Tom couldn’t make sense of them. 

The air was thick with it; a burning prickling on the back of his neck and curling down his spine like a fishhook. Tom tried to ignore the weak sound his heart made as it thudded against his ribs, just as he tried to ignore the rustling of the ferns and the way the soil beneath his feet didn’t behave like soil. It was too soft under his feet, almost gelatinous, but at the same time, it was dry. 

Any other time, Tom would have stopped walking so that he could touch it, run it between his fingers and learn about it. But now, he kept walking, kept stepping further and further towards something, or perhaps away; quite frankly, he didn’t know anymore whether be was going back or forward. Did it matter? 

A sound behind him made Tom turn again. 

And again. 

He was practically spinning in circles. 

Always in the corner of his eyes was a movement; nothing more than the shifting of the leaves and the twitching of the ferns, as though someone had been walking past just moments before. The brushing and the rustling and that slight crunching that follows every animal’s steps were loud behind, and then in front, and to the left and to the right. 

Everywhere. 

Everywhere there was this raging noise. 

Loud and deep, bellowing almost, and Tom’s name was on the tip of every unhuman syllable. There was terribleness sewed into that contortion of words; good, English syllables twisted and distorted until they dripped from a deformed creature’s mouth. Whatever was speaking, was howling and it wasn’t human anymore.

Tom drew his wand; it was heavy in his palms, but the grooves of the wood were a pleasant familiarity and gripped it tighter. Whatever it was that lurked just out of sight, he could take it.

Carefully now, and whilst avoiding touching any of those, stiff, almost manufactured, plants or the trunks of unnatural trees, Tom took another step forward, not deeper into the woods, but not shallower either—just straight ahead. One foot in front of the other as the sounds around him grew so much louder and his pulse rose higher in his throat, and the soil seemed to ooze around his shoes in a way that soil shouldn’t be able to. 

There was certainly something _wrong_ about this place. 

Something twisted that warped time and perverted nature itself. 

But there wasn’t time to think on that because now there was something else in this false forest that made Tom stop where he was, a shiver tingling in his spine. Ten paces ahead of him was a tree identical to all the others in all but one crucial way, for this particular tree was wrapped with glowing tendrils that couldn’t be defined with any human description because they were so painfully unhuman. 

They wound around the bark, like fingers and sunk into the tree itself—oozing between the grooves—and the colour was so distorted that Tom couldn’t name it; he could only stare, his palms were hot and slippery, and there was a lump in his throat. He knew enough about silvology to know that iridescence did not, and should not, occur here. The glow that was coloured somewhere between gold and green did not belong in a forest, in fact, it did not belong _anywhere_.

Tom continued to stare, unable to move his eyes from the way those tendrils curled and pulsed as both, part of the tree, and entirely separate from it. It was disorientating watching something so… grotesque and Tom clenched his hand around his wand until his nails dug into his palm.

He only looked away when something else caught his eye. Something more unnerving. Hating himself a little, Tom turned to look: the trees to his right were starting to glow too—thick green-gold tendrils that throbbed and palpitated. He turned again. It was the same behind, glowing, phosphorescent, fingers wrapped themselves so tightly. Tom turned once more. He was surrounded by them, each the same on every tree; each glowing brighter than the last; each pulsating against the wood, oozing into the indentations in a way that was so perversely wrong. 

Tom turned again, this time intending to leave, after all, whatever it was the lurked here, probably shouldn’t be found, but just as he took a step the world cut to a shattering silence and just at the moment of quietude his wand was knocked from his hand and the oxygen was grabbed from his lungs as he was shoved back against the forest floor, all at once falling so fast that Tom couldn’t get his arms down quick enough to weather his fall, but so slow that he saw each and every changing angle, and felt the last wisps of air leave his lungs.

And then he was on the floor, his head hitting the ground hard and his fingers sinking into the cold, damp earth. Blinking hard and heavy, Tom could see above him the dark, cloud-laden sky smattered between the leaves that were green and rotting, and the slight haze in his periphery as those tendrils continued their glowing. For a moment, he lay there, staring at the sky and feeling the softness of the soil on the tips of his fingers. It was too soft. Too dry. And too devoid of any life. 

No insects tittered around the forest floor.

There was nothing _alive_ here, not anymore. 

Shaking his head, Tom tried to sit up, but something kept him down; both arms refused to do what he wanted them to, so did his legs, and his waist and his torso. Another lump of apprehension rose in his throat like bile as he struggled against, apparently, nothing, for there wasn’t a physical restraint anywhere near him. 

Rather whatever was holding him down was something far beyond the physical; an intangible force that felt like magic, but not like any sort of magic that Tom had ever known. This felt rougher, older, and far rawer like gold scrubbed bare; it was the sort of power that Tom had always, not so secretly, longed to have, but have never even witnessed. 

Though now he was its most intimate witness as it wrapped itself around him and held him so perfectly still against the ground. Anywhere else, he might have been impressed, but currently, his heart was throbbing too much and his head was aching and there really wasn’t enough oxygen inside him to feel anything other than a horrific desperation 

Tom swallowed and tried to breathe. 

He could still move his hands and his fingers, and his toes and his feet, even his neck and his head, but everything else was pressed down, as though there were nails hammered through all his joints, though, nothing hurt. It was cold against the ground and damp even though it hadn’t rained for ages; Tom could feel the spring of wet moss by his neck and that soft, soft soil oozing through his jumper. 

And he had to keep shaking his head because all around him the scenery was blurring, melting together almost, the colours dribbling into one another, and the trees and bushes and flowers and foliage all conglomerating into hazes of green and burning gold. He squeezed his eyes shut until he was seeing stars behind his lids, but when he opened them, the world was the same. 

Trees seemed to come together—absorbing into each other—until their trunks were thicker and they could have been legs for some being that was so huge it scraped the edge of the sun. At the same time, there was this noise of moving dirt, roaring like the heart of a fire, and Tom watched in equal fascination and horror as the earth began rising up—soft soil sliding down the slopes; the layers of mud and clay that hung beneath rolling out into the open air. 

The very bowels of the earth and all the empty contents were being vomited back up before his eyes and with it, the sound started again, though now it was more recognisable. Still a deep, resonating, drone, but now he could hear his name in every word. The endless noise came from every direction: equal parts far above him and far below—just everywhere this constant billowing echo, howling out his name, as an infinite weight pushed down on his ribs and squeezed at his lungs until he was almost suffocating. 

There was something lurking in the Forbidden Forest, and Tom was going to find out what it was.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise, I really don't know what happened to this chapter.

Tom lay there on the burning edge of suffocation; his lungs starving and the tips of his fingers digging deeper into the soil, as though there was a tangible contraption hidden beneath the surface that was holding him so unenviably still, and it was unenviable to be confined like this with no choice but the to watch as the physical world shredded itself before his eyes. 

Far above him the leaves of the trees continued to shrivel and fall even though there was no wind, and the ferns all around him began to split apart—the guttation dripping onto the ground, though where the droplets fell there was no wet left behind. Tom swallowed hard and kept his eyes on the ground itself as it contorted as though it were alive. The soil rising up and curling over itself, building and binding a form that was almost anthropomorphic, and perhaps, would have been if it wasn’t made of the innards of the world; roots spilling out, and fanned leaves and rotten wood distorting themselves into the deformed shape of something that might have been human.

Tom attempted to shift again; pulling against this magical force that kept him so still, until it felt like there was barbed wire digging into his skin and latching into his veins. Whatever it was with sticks for bones and mud for skin, was twisting and turning—stretching out from the earth but looking like no creature that had ever belonged in this world. 

As it continued to form, to build itself up from the ground, forming a body from the infinite spaces that existed—feeding off them—until it was tangible and touchable and _real_ , Tom twisted himself again, stretching out his fingers to try and reach his wand with the tips. He could use magic to reach it, but a small part of him whispered that that probably wasn’t such a good idea. 

He only stopped scrabbling in the dirt when he realised that there was a poignance in the air that hadn’t been there before; a focus to the excess energy that was buzzing and humming and howling around the growing form. Tom looked up. 

It was looking at him. 

Shapes and limbs and features that were human, or, at least, they _should_ have been, but were wrong in ways that Tom couldn’t describe; in fact, the whole form looked like it had _used_ to be human—a long time ago—but since it had been corrupted and corroded by time and space and everything that lay beyond the unknowable. The configuration of lines had been jumbled and was now blurred at the edges, each one painted thick and indistinct as though Tom was looking at them through frosted glass. 

But even the blur did not, and indeed could not, disguise the thing that made Tom struggle harder against his restraint. For along the lines where human veins would be, there were those same green-gold tendrils that had, and still were, wrapping themselves around the trees; pulsating and giving a heartbeat to things that shouldn’t have one. 

This close Tom could hear them crackling; there was such a profound magic in this creature, so deep and rich and _heavy_ that Tom didn’t want it anywhere near him; mostly because, unlike half his friends, he believed in self-preservation, and in the wildly unpopular notion of _not fucking dying_. Not now, and preferably not ever. But the mere fact that Tom didn’t want those tendrils anywhere near him, did not stop them coming near him. 

Against his will, he could see the way that they pulsated—squeezing the creature’s body, appearing to lift off the skin before falling back to it like a magnet—was unnatural, bordering on freakish. So too, could Tom see the patterns that they made, how those tendrils twisted and tangled but still cascaded over the creature’s skin like a lightning strike using him as a conduit to reach the earth, and from the creature’s feet, they spread out towards the trees. 

There was one, thick, green vein beneath him now; Tom could just see it in his periphery if he tilted his neck as far as he could to the left. It curled, making the soil along one stretch, beneath Tom’s lower back, become warmer and emit this sickened glow. As he looked now, he could see more of these—all stretching out from the creature and wrapping himself around the trees and the bushes and half-living thing in this forest. 

This creature was like their heartbeat. 

Sustaining them, feeding them, or perhaps, they fed it. 

Tom swallowed and tried to focus his eyes on his right hand—watching it scrabble in the earth, dirt under the nails and powdered soil coating his skin as it stretched out desperately trying to reach the wand that might just preserve his life—but it was hard to keep that focus. For there was a magnetism to whatever creature that was, and Tom found his eyes wandering back up to it without any conscious intention on his part. 

But the sight that caught his eyes in a clamp was a beautiful one, hypnotic even, and it had Tom staring even when he knew he shouldn’t. He was almost fixated, like his friends when they had a crush and couldn’t get the offending individual out of their heads, no matter how much complaining Tom did. Perhaps, this was what having a crush felt like; being squeezed by someone—or something’s—physicality, having them steal the air your lungs, and being turned to a pulp by their very existence.

That thought was interrupted. 

“You know,” the creature said, “you were a lot easier to bait here than I thought you’d be,” the thing continued, its words settling lower and sharper, becoming more human the longer it spoke. “I suppose curiosity really does kill the cat, doesn’t it?” it continued, as it began to contort its body again so that it managed to jerk forward, moving unnaturally—all stuttering and glitchy as though he wasn’t quite all here. 

Tom didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say to a creature that was so absurdly unhuman, but who spoke with a human diction and used proverbs that no other species could use so accurately. 

Tom continued his silence, even as the creature approached his hand, and stooped down, bending in the wrong places to pick up his wand and to hold it with something that wasn’t a hand. Though, as it did so there was a perceptible shift, and, as though the glass concealing it had been broken, and Tom could suddenly see it with far more clarity. Between the deformations and the otherworldliness of the colours and shapes that made up this creature, he could see the faintest remnants of a human template under its skin. 

Which could only mean that it had either build itself from human parts or, that whatever it was, had once been human too. 

But it certainly wasn’t human anymore. That much was clear from the size and weighty presences of it like there was a mass the size of infinite cosmoses crushed up inside this being. And from its eyes. Tom could see them clearly from this angle, and they weren’t a natural colour, rather there was something about the shade. Something that made Tom’s skin crawl but his heart drum harder against his ribs. For it was the colour of nature, and yet it was so unnatural; just cephalopodic swirlings of olive green, mixing and mingling with the glittering sparks of… a colour that should have been unseeable. 

“You have a nice wand,” it said, as misshapen fingers curved around it, and the pretty, green, tendrils leeched off the creature’s hands and began to touch.

“Give it back,” Tom said, attempting to sound determined, though the words appeared to wither on his tongue and all he managed was to sound faint and distant and almost afraid, which was frankly ridiculous. After all, just because his hands were twitching and his heart was thudding and he could scarcely hear a thing thanks to the blood rushing through his head, it didn’t mean he was afraid. 

Either way, the thing ignored him and continued to twirl his wand between its hands—though the way they twisted was unlike any hands Tom had ever seen: the wrists were too flexible to be of human origin and the way the fingers turned to catch the tip was as sickening as it was fascinating.   
“My name is Harry,” it said slowly, deeply, with a human lilt that felt constructed, as though this language was long forgotten on Harry’s tongue.

Tom didn’t reply.

Instead, he kept his jaw tight and tried to look past the creature—up at the sky—because, surely this…thing was nothing more than an animal —even if he couldn’t put a name to its perverse species—and perhaps if he didn’t engage with it, it might get bored. Perhaps, this was all merely a dehydration fuelled hallucination that would be over in a few hours; that would certainly explain the dryness of his tongue and the scratching of back of his throat and a crawling sensation all over his skin, stinging him with static. 

“I won’t get bored, Tom,” the thing said, stopping fiddling with his wand to look at him with its eyes shining and its mouthpiece curving in a way that was entirely too wide—almost severed—gaping from his between his throat and his jaw, and Tom felt something cold and sick slide down his spine. It knew his name. It knew what he was thinking. It knew—

“I always know what you’re thinking, Tom,” Harry said, still watching him, with his unblinking eyes and that horrid smile. As he spoke, Harry appeared to decide that Tom’s wand was boring or unnecessary, or simply a distraction, and he tossed it aside; it landed a couple of feet away. Even if Tom could have reached it, he wasn’t given the opportunity, In fact, Tom could only watch with wide eyes and a heaviness in his chest as the earth began to split and one of those tendrils crawled up and slithered over the hilt and up the length—swallowing it down into a stomach below the surface of the earth. 

Trying not to think of anything at all, Tom turned his neck back to face Harry, “I needed that,” he said, dryly, forcing the words out from between gritted teeth. 

Harry continued to watch him, though now he leaned his form back and made a sound that in another world could have been laughter, but here, was nothing more than bone-chilling. It was loud, and deep, resonating through the air and the soil, and working its way _inside_ Tom until he could feel the sound ricocheting off his ribcage. 

But laughter, or, at the very least, its deformed sibling, did something to else Harry. It softened the lines that he was made of again and seemed to shrink him into something more human—someone more like Tom, as though the thing inside him—that template on which he carved his form—was Tom himself. Skin formed, stretching over bones and muscle, and limbs were whittled down from the earth to form something so very _almost_ human, though, for all his attempts, the angles that Harry fashioned for himself were still wrong—grotesque even—and profoundly disturbing. 

And still the tendrils pulsed into Harry’s skin, rising and falling as though they were tied to his very breath. “You’re amusing, Tom,” Harry said in that slow, careful tone as though his voice alone could break bones—maybe it could—though the pitch was lower now, and the quality far more human. “But amusing me isn’t going to help you…”

The pause was as deliberate as it was dramatic, but Tom didn’t back down his gaze—it was a cultivated talent of his to outstare anyone, and that included otherworldly beings. So, he kept his glare steady and tried not to wince when he felt the full force of his magic in his lungs. It was thick, pushing out the oxygen from the air, and replacing it with something heady and noxious that made him gasp out for a decent lungful of air. 

“…Not when I know all about you,” Harry said, lowering himself down to Tom’s level, the ground shaking as he did so, and those little lines of lightning lifting off his skin—hissing like starving snakes waiting to be fed. Once again, Tom tried not to look, but with Harry’s face pressed so close and those eyes, all at once human, and unhuman, he couldn’t help it. 

“Yes,” Harry repeated, stretching out further, and copying the lines and motions of Tom’s own body, forming himself into a copy that was as fascinating as it was unnerving, “I know all about you and your silly little dreams, Tom.”

If anyone else had said something like that, Tom would have reacted—either a hiss in their ear if they were in company, or a particularly nasty curse if they were alone—just given them something to remind them of their place. But with Harry, he kept his mouth shut; his teeth pressed, almost painfully, together and his fingers clenching, digging themselves into his palm like that would help. 

It didn’t. 

All it managed to achieve was Harry tilting his head, that too wide smile back on his face and the tendrils seeming to pulse faster and dragging the rhythm of the world to their tempo. He could feel the one beneath him, burning hot and throbbing beneath the soil, forcing his heart into the same, deep, laborious, pounding.  
“For instance,” Harry said, the syllables dripping off his tongue, “you’re wasting your time on the pursuit of immortality.”

“Am I?” Tom said, dragging his gaze away and still desperately trying to shift his weight away from the ardent pulse below; the one that seemed to be rising closer to the surface with every passing moment. The moment it broke the surface was shocking, and Tom couldn’t help but bite at his lip as he watched the think tendril flop lazily across his waist—all at once, a solid and a liquid, burning hot and so _heavy_ on top of him. 

“Yes, you are,” Harry continued, “and you know _why_ I’m telling you that?” he said, his eyes still shining bright, and apparently unconcerned with the way that _part of him_ was lying across Tom, lethargically moving, the colours almost oozing from it like blood—but not _human_ blood. This was a substance that was unlike any Tom had seen before, a cross between mucus and saliva, and it was so hard pushing down on him, as though it too might swallow him into the earth. 

“No,” Tom managed to say, as the tip of his green-gold coil of a thing, wrapped itself tighter against his ribs. 

“Because, Tom,” said Harry, now lifting himself up, and shifting his weight to be above Tom, nearly human hands pressed on either side of his neck, and an almost human thigh on either side of his waist—looking down at him with his mouth too wide, and the tendrils still stuck in his skin, writhing on it, “I know how it all ends; for your friends, your acquaintances, even yourself.”

“And how _does_ it all end?” Tom spat, trying so hard to keep his face set into a glare, even as Harry leaned his own approximately human face closer so that it was mere centimetres that separated the two of them.

“Oh, Tom,” he murmured, leaning back and pressing his weight down on top of him, practically crushing his bones, and letting the tendrils start to drip like Spanish moss of his skin, at first, just scraping, but then beginning to press themselves into the contours of Tom’s clothes, and against the ridges and into the hollows of his body— _touching_ him—as they pleased. Each stark, and hot and covered in a static that left behind red marks on his bare skin, though that quickly mutated into a green colour that would have suggested bruising, other than the fact it didn’t seem to hurt. 

Even so, Tom tried to keep breathing normally and to lean away—trying to press himself down into the soil—but he was held back, in part, by the nature of physics, and in part, by Harry. The tendrils now wrapping themselves around his fingers, and creeping up along his neck, following a line traced by Harry’s thumb. “Oh, Tom,” he repeated, pressing his thumb into his pulse, “it all ends with your death.”

There was something lurking in the Forbidden Forest, and Tom had unfortunately found out what it was.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, I do not know what I was doing with this chapter, hopefully, it's at least vaguely coherent.

For a moment, Tom just lay there just to comprehend a creature that had decided it knew, quite intimately, the fate of the world, as though it had read it in its palms. For one single moment, the world was slow and still, and he could hear the every beat of his heart and feel everything, from the scratch of his shirt against his skin to the weight of each tendril as it pressed into his body; the two sensations seemed to combine, the tendrils pushing and pressing, pulling the fabric of his shirt taut across his shoulder and tight at his waist. 

“You cannot know the future,” he found himself saying, though the words didn’t feel like they came from his tongue; they were too desperate—too hopeless—because death was not part of his plan, be it at the hands of Harry, or anybody else. 

“Unfortunately for you,” Harry murmured back, keeping his head steady and his eyes trained on Tom’s mouth, “I can, and I do,” he said, “and just like everyone else, you will die in the end.”

Tom tightened his jaw, but he dropped the point—if Harry thought he knew what the future held then there was no purpose wasting time arguing with him. Instead, he’d focus on something more important right now: escaping this whole scenario. Maybe, if he just concentrated, then he’d be able to shock him—after all, he didn’t _need_ his wand to perform magic—at least, long enough for him to get back on his feet.

His planning was interrupted. 

“Oh, Tom,” Harry said, smiling a little wider—pushing to the edge of natural human capability—as his tendrils dripped down further at pressed into Tom’s chin, forcing his head up. “You really need to learn to shut your mind,” he said, “you might parade around your friends pretending you’re a god,” he paused to move his face closer to Tom’s, brushing the tendrils off the skin at his neck and replacing it with the soft stroke of the tips of his fingers. Those fingers were too cool and too smooth to be made from human skin, rather they felt like the skin of a snake.

“But underneath,” he said, pressing his face close enough that Tom should have been able to feel him breathe, “you’re nothing more than a human playing pretend.” The words each held an acidity that Tom hadn’t heard him use before, and it just made him squirm more: clenching his fingers and trying to kick out his legs as though this would be the undiscovered way to hurt Harry; it didn’t work. 

All that happened were those tendrils, that had been caressing his shoulders quite unobtrusively, now returned to his throat and climbed even higher than before, curling around his muscles and pressing into the pulse until Tom found himself gasping at the air—though he continued to struggle, twisting his neck and raising his chin. As though it would help, Tom pushed back into the soil, feeling it rubbing into his hair and dirtying his skin as he tried to wriggle his way out of this, like this creature was nothing more than a man. But for every twitch of his muscles, and every thrash of his neck, the tendril across his waist pushed down harder, squeezing the air out of his lungs, and each little coil that dripped down from Harry’s skin, pressed harder into his throat, forcing him to be still. 

“Oh,” Harry cooed again, “you’re such a scrappy thing, aren’t you?” he said, as his human-esque hand reached up from Tom’s neck to touch at his chin—to hold it tight between his fingers. Like that they felt even more like snakeskin; that cool not quite slimy texture that Tom was used to pressing itself into his skin. Tom just pushed his teeth together, harder than before, and clenched his hands tight, refusing to look Harry in the eyes because he was not _scrappy_. 

Hyperactive puppies were scrappy; _he_ was not. 

But Harry was unmoved and simply continued to watch him, experimentally tightening his grip and smiling at the dents he made in Tom’s skin, as though he hadn’t touched something so human—so _fleshy_ —in a long enough span of time that it had become a novelty.  
“But you have such a handsome face,” Harry continued to muse, loosening his grip just a little and forcing Tom’s chin up with his blunt nails, “it makes me want to eat you up, Tom.”

Unable to suppress it, Tom shivered at the thought of that, even if Harry dressed the concept of being eaten up in fancy vocabulary, it didn’t change the fundamental mechanisms of the act, namely, dying—painfully. And Tom hadn’t yet resigned himself to death, much less in such a painful way as that. 

Though if Harry noticed the way he tensed up, stopping his struggling in favour of simply confirming the existence of all his muscles, he didn’t comment on it. Rather, he continued to dig his nails into Tom’s chin and smile in that strangely human way, even as he spoke of something so inhuman.   
“Do you want me to do that to you?” Harry was saying, “do you want me to get you between my teeth, Tom, and slide you over my tongue; I’d love to take a bite right here.” He dropped his hand from Tom’s chin to his pounding pulse, still coated in a layer of glowing tendrils and the tips of his fingers, lingering on the pulse point for several morbid seconds, “I think you’d bleed out so pretty.” 

Only a moment later Harry’s fingers left the spot on his neck—leaving behind a burning section of skin that ached with every pump of his pulse—and began to creep back up along his jaw and into his hair. With a gentleness Tom would have thought impossible for such a creature, Harry smoothed his hair back from his face; his fingers so careful that it left Tom’s skin prickling.

“But,” he continued, “it would be such a shame to waste that face of yours.” As if to emphasise his point, Harry ran one of his cool fingers back down Tom’s cheek—that slippery skin skimming over Tom’s like a stone skating across a millpond. 

Harry’s fingers continued their inattentive exploration by sliding over Tom’s jawline before creeping back up over his chin to touch at his lips. With his thumb, Harry traced around Tom’s mouth, pulling at the corner like he was a dog with a chance of being best in show having his teeth examined.  
“I mean,” Harry said, quieter this time, “I knew you were going to be attractive, but…” Harry sighed and bit his lip in a feigned version of human emotion that Tom had used to his advantage on more than one occasion.

Tom just rolled his eyes. Everything there was to say about his face had been said a hundred times before—it was the only useful thing his father had ever done for him—and he was bored of it, though perhaps he shouldn’t knock it given that having a pretty face might just be the only thing keeping Harry from actually taking a bite out of him right now. 

“I suppose a lot of people tell you how good you look, don’t they?” Harry said, strangely conversationally, and looking more human than ever, as his hands continued to track around Tom’s mouth, and those tendrils loosened their grip of his throat enough that he could take a good lungful of air. It was refreshing to feel the oxygen sliding back into his lungs and the ache that had started so deep inside him begin to dim a little—though it didn’t disappear, merely mutated into something more confusing. 

“Does it make you feel good?” he murmured, “does it dull down all those other insecurities?”

“What insecurities?” Tom hissed.

Harry actually laughed at that, before his demeanour shifted, and the smile he was wearing became cold. “The fact that you’re so afraid of not being good enough,” Harry murmured, the words spilling off his tongue so matter-of-factly that each syllable delved deeper into Tom’s skin—slicing a deep gash inside him—Harry just smiled. “You’re so afraid of being rejected,” he said, as the tendrils pressed back into his pulse and slowly began to cut off his air. Harry leaned closer, so close in fact that Tom could feel the heat of his tongue against his lips, “you’re so afraid of being _forgotten_ , aren’t you, Tom?”

It hit harder than it should have done because Tom wasn’t supposed to have those insecurities; he’d promised himself that he wasn’t scared of anything anymore—it was a waste of time worrying about what everyone else was always thinking—and, anyway, he didn’t _need_ anyone else. 

He twisted his neck again if only to stare at the soft ferns that surrounded them, their leaves hanging like green feathers from the stems and kissing the bare earth; if there had been a breeze, they might have swept the ground clear of dust. But there was no breeze in this unnatural forest, here there was nothing that wasn’t intimately connected to Harry and Harry didn’t need something as trivial as water to sustain himself. 

As Tom moved, however inefficiently, those spare tendrils that he still wasn’t sure whether Harry was actually controlling or not, began to curl themselves a little higher around his legs and spill down his shoulders; rubbing at the fabric of his shirt and slacks so intently that it almost burned his skin. It was frustrating and just made that ache inside him rise again and send a sick shiver through every nerve. 

He needed something—anything—to use as leverage and Tom found himself staring at Harry’s eyes, falling into the green, tumbling down through layers of vegetation—hundreds of ferns folding over one other over and over again—and it was so unbearably hypnotic that he could practically see the blackness curving into the corners of his vision. On the precipice of passing out, he felt something pushing into the channels of his brain. 

“And you’re so lonely, Harry,” Tom choked out. 

“What did you say?” said Harry, the tendrils retracting their grip just enough that Tom could gulp down the oxygen he needed to breathe. He lay there panting, his hand itching to press against his throat and feel for physical damage to his neck, but he couldn’t, especially not with the way Harry was looking at him.   
“What did you say?” he repeated, sounding genuinely human and genuinely unhappy like his friends did when he struck that sensitive nerve that they’d been stupid enough to confide to him. 

“I said,” Tom said, holding his gaze and looking through that green and seeing the human that Harry had used to be staring back at him through the face of a monster, “you’re so lonely, Harry,” he repeated, “I can hear it, feel it, practically taste it all over you.”

Harry opened his mouth, but no words came out, no sound at all filtered out from between his teeth, just this endless blank silence as he realised that someone had read something about himself that he hadn’t been willing to admit. It was nice to watch him stumble. But it was also an opportunity and Tom rarely wasted an opportunity.

“So why don’t we make a deal?” he said; the language of backroom agreements and underhand political arrangements, one that he was more than proficient in. “You let me go, and—” 

“Oh, I’m going to have to cut you off right there, Tommy,” Harry said, his voice found and his tone back to that insidious thing just on the right side of human. Tom bristled at the nickname that only the most obnoxious of his ‘friends’ insisted on using. As he spoke, Harry pressed his thumb to Tom’s mouth again, harder than before, pushing his lip against his teeth until it started to sting, and then more.  
“I’m not going to be letting you go anywhere,” Harry murmured softly as his tendrils wrapped themselves a little tighter, almost possessively so, around him. 

They squeezed everywhere they could, coiling around his thighs and looping around his chest and pulsing—forcing his heart to join in the too slow rhythm that they’d set. It was an aching pace, an unbearable throb that got Tom biting his tongue and almost wishing he hadn’t said anything; but only almost because he’d got a glimpse in that moment of the person that Harry used to be, and people could be bargained with.

“Why should I?” Harry continued, “when I am apparently so in need of companionship?” He paused and slid his thumb back onto Tom’s lips before shoving it into his mouth with a force that Tom didn’t bother trying to resist—it wasn’t worth the effort. Harry smiled at that and shoved the pad of his thumb against Tom’s tongue, forcing it against the floor of his mouth. “And why should I?” he said, “when you are so good for that role, Tommy?” he continued, “because while I’m sure you like to pretend that you’re one of them, you’re not, are you?” Harry continued, “you’re not like them and you’ll never be. All you are is a scrappy little boy who thinks he was made for something better.” As he spoke the looped tendrils continued to slide and pulse lower on his chest and the coils slithered higher up his thighs, threatening to meet at the large tendril still slung over his stomach.

“I mean, would anyone really even _miss_ you?”

Tom tried to ignore it; all of it. The heat from the tendrils oozing through his clothes, and the coolness of Harry’s thumb pressing inside his mouth; the subtle bite behind Harry’s words, and the horrible truth they held; the way that he felt too tight in his skin, and the itching on his tongue because everything Harry said was thoughts Tom would deny existed even though they careened through his head almost constantly. 

“But I can change that, at least, for a while,” Harry murmured, softer now, his thumb no longer pressing down with such an intensity, “I’ll be nice to you since I like your face so much, and I’ll let you have a taste of true power if you want it.”

Tom looked at him carefully, his skin prickling at the suggestion of power because who didn’t want a little more power? A little more control in their life. But he hesitated too because this wasn’t _taking_ power, this was being given it by a creature he barely understood, and every synapse of common sense told him not to agree to something so stupid. But then again, he wasn’t getting out of this mess any other way, was he?

“Of course,” Harry murmured, sliding his thumb out of Tom’s mouth entirely, but still holding his cheek in the guise of human intimacy, “if I let you try it, you’ll cannibalise yourself trying to get a taste of it again.”

“I won’t,” Tom hissed because that was a ridiculous suggestion. 

But Harry seemed to disagree as he used both his hand to shove Tom hard against the ground, before letting his fingers curl around Tom’s throat, the nails pressing deep into the base—testing the limits of human skin. “I know your nature,” he said softly, “I know that you’ll rip shred after shred out of yourself just to sate the hunger.” Harry paused to smile again, “but it won’t end until you’ve eaten yourself up and there’s nothing left but fragments of what you were.”

Tom swallowed. Harry was closer now than he had been before, and he could feel it in every square inch of his weight pressing down on him, and the crackling sensation he got where their skin touched. Simply put, everything inside Tom was aching, from his lungs to his legs, and there was a foreign feeling blooming in his abdomen, something hot and firm and profoundly uncomfortable—perhaps it was fear, perhaps it was something else, Tom didn’t really want to analyse everything that was scratching around under his skin. Or, honestly, that which was outside either.

Harry was watching him carefully, his hands stroking his throat in a motion that was almost soothing.  
“So, do you want it?” he murmured, the words brushing over his lips and all the tendrils pulsing in pace with him, “do you _really_ want it?”

**Author's Note:**

> This is about 85% written so updates will be relatively regularly (hopefully) as I edit it.
> 
> Also, sorry for the chapter lengths (I know they're a bit short).


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